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Home Front: WoT

Pre-trial hearings resume for SEAsian suspects held at Guantanamo

2023-04-25

[BenarNews] Prosecutors preparing a case against three Southeast Asians incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay will finish sharing evidence with defense attorneys in January 2024, lawyers said Monday, illustrating the glacial pace of progress toward trial for men held at the controversial prison since 2006.

Indonesian Encep Nurjaman (also known as Hambali

...real name Riduan Isamuddin, close personal friend of Osama bin Laden, one of the founders of Jemaah Islamiyah and the planner of the 2002 Bali bombings. He was captured with the help of a mid-Eastern intel service, shipped to Guantanamo to rot but he'll likely be released eventually because that was a long time ago and we were all so much younger then...
) and Malaysians Nazir bin Lep

...more formally Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, informally Lillie. He’s one of Hambali’s lieutenants — they were captured together in Thailand in 2003...

and Farik bin Amin

... another Hambali lieutenant, he’s known more formally as Mohd Farik Bin Amin, his nom de guerre was Zubair Zaid and while it’s uncertain whether he was captured with the other two, the three spent years with the same interrogators. His cousin was master bomb maker Zulkifli Abdhir, called Marwan, who provided senior management and work product for the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia, Jemaah Islamiyah, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters until he intersected a hail of Philippine bullets in 2015...

were present in the courtroom at the U.S. military facility in Cuba for proceedings witnessed by news hounds via video link to Fort Meade, a military base about an hour northeast of Washington. The men face charges linked to terrorist bombings in Indonesia in 2002 and 2003.

Lead prosecutor Col. George C. Kraehe said his team was seeking to "get this case tried on the merits by March 2025."

Earlier, Brian Bouffard, who represents bin Lep, questioned the government’s pace in presenting evidence to the defense teams. Lawyers for bin Amin and Nurjaman raised similar issues.

"We are trying to uncover the reasons for delay after delay after delay," Bouffard told the court.

Military Judge Hayes C. Larsen noted the defense concerns about late filings.

Kraehe said his team was working to gather evidence for the trial, adding that it was working on this even during the hearing.

"This is not unusual in a national security case," he said.

Kraehe said that about 90% of the evidence had been turned over to the defense, and the remaining 10% was highly classified. Because of that, steps need to be taken before it is turned over to defense, he said, adding that he expected to finish doing so by late January 2024.

Referred to as "alien unprivileged enemy belligerents" in some court documents, Nurjaman, bin Amin and bin Lep face charges related to twin bombings that killed 202 people in Bali in October 2002 — Indonesia’s deadliest terror attack to date — and a bombing at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003.

Following their 2003 arrests in Thailand, the three were sent to secret CIA black sites before being moved to the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006. A U.S. Senate report released in 2014 found that each was tortured during his time in the black sites.

INTERPRETATION ISSUES
Monday’s hearing — the first of three days scheduled — began with prosecutors questioning Larsen, who will be leaving the bench in June to assume command of the Navy’s Defense Service Office West. He said he did not have any information about who would take over the trial.

Twenty minutes into the hearing, Bouffard and Christine Funk, who represents bin Amin, complained — as they have done throughout the legal process — of inadequate translation services, saying their clients were hearing Bahasa Indonesia interpretation instead of their national language, Bahasa Malaysia.

Later, the two lawyers told Larsen that English words were being intermixed with the translations.

"It’s a tired refrain," Larsen responded, dismissing the complaint.

During their two-day August 2021 arraignment, lawyers for the three men spent much of the time protesting before Larsen regarding the poor quality of interpreting.

Larsen ordered military prosecutors to hire and assign qualified interpreters for any upcoming court action.

Posted by:trailing wife

#1 Susan Sim, 12 Dec, 2021,
This Week in Asia
Two decades after Singapore began cracking down on a pan-Southeast Asia terrorist group calling itself Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the network’s operations leader, Hambali, remains at Guantanamo Bay awaiting trial. The evidence against him shows that he took orders and money from the al-Qaeda mastermind behind 9/11 to stage terrorist attacks in the region, including the deadly Bali bombings in 2002, and was planning yet more attacks when captured in 2003. In the second of a two-part feature, Susan Sim, who was a journalist in Jakarta during the events of September 11, 2001, takes a look at his legacy of mayhem.
In late August this year, a US military commission in Guantanamo Bay charged Hambali and two Malaysians he had recruited for an aborted al-Qaeda suicide attack on the United States – Mohd Farik bin Amin, alias Zubair, and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep, alias Lillie – with conspiracy, murder, terrorism and attacking civilians.
The charges centred on two terrorist attacks in Indonesia where Americans had been among the casualties. Hambali himself does not appear to dispute his involvement in both attacks. But the charge sheet also implicates him in every significant JI activity up to and a year beyond his capture. ...

Posted by: Slavising Unineting5672 2023-04-25 10:39

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